On March 16, 2022, at the joint session of the Houses, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered his latest address to the people of Kazakhstan. Since the Kazakh information space has already begun to get flooded with pro-government comments, we put in our two cents.
The first thing that has caught our attention is this. The President of Kazakhstan said nothing about his predecessor even when talking about the January ‘explosion’ of protests in Kazakhstan. He didn’t even hint about cancelling the law on the First President of Kazakhstan and holding Nursultan Nazarbayev responsible for all the crimes and misdeeds he had committed.
So, basically, the new address of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the ‘super—presidential’ vertical is nothing but compromise. Between the necessity to do something in order to preserve his place in power and the impossibility to take action and conduct serious reforms without reexamining the past 30 years and acknowledging that the Nazarbayev’s regime had caused the January tragedy.
Since the text of the address is rather long, we will limit our analysis to examining Akorda’s official press-release and the statements in support of the address made by two vocal statesmen - Secretary of State Erlan Karin and Head of the Senate of the Kazakh Parliament Maulen Ashimbayev.
Akorda’s press-release is titled ‘The Head of the State Delivers an Address to the People of Kazakhstan (see the link in the first paragraph of the article).
Let us begin with Akorda’s first statement.
‘The Head of the State has presented a large-scale program of political reforms and a number of social and economic measures to be implemented in the nearest future’.
In our opinion, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev did present a program of reforms (and of a large-scale variety) but, unfortunately it is suitable not for today’s but for yesterday’s Kazakhstan.
Prior to the events of the current January and the exodus of Nazarbayev’s relatives and allies from the political front stage, Tokayev’s words said on March 16, 2022, should have had much more weight than they do now. And they might even have received massive support on the part of the Kazakh citizens. Today, however, it is already not enough.
Moving along. Here is another quote from Akorda’s press-release.
‘At the beginning of the address, the Kazakh leader has assessed the tragic events of January. In his opinion, the goal of this large-scale and meticulously planned operation was to the overthrow the top-authorities and to discredit them in the eyes of the people and foreign civil society’.
In our view that we have been holding on to from the first days of the January tragedy, the main reason for what happened was that the protest sentiment had broken loose. And all the active players, without exception, have been trying to profit from it.
These players include Kassym-Jomart Tokayev who, with the support of his allies, has been vigourously promoting the idea of an external interference and now is focusing on the conspiracy scenario that involves certain representatives of the Nazarbayev clan, first of all, former NSC Chief Karim Masimov and Nazarbayev’s eldest nephew Kayrat Satybaldy.
Here is the next quote from the press-release related to cancelling the idea of super-presidential republic.
‘The Head of the State has underscored the importance of revising the presidential authorities and moving from the super-presidential republic to the presidential republic with a strong Parliament.
In particular, he has suggested to pass the law obligating the head of the state to revoke their party membership for the duration of the term and to prohibit akims and there deputies to hold official positions in the parties’ branches’.
In our opinion, one cannot but support Tokayev and the all-level akims leaving the Amanat party. Moreover, we propose that all governmental officials with no exception should be removed from the party’s leadership. This includes the prime minister of Kazakhstan. At the same time, we recommend one not to delude oneself - if this party remains under the control of Akorda which, in our opinion, is unavoidable, there will be no point in this kind of division of the ruling party and the ‘super’presidential’ vertical.
We have laughed at the statement that ‘the norm related to close relatives of the President should be constitutionalised’ and that ‘their holding the positions of governmental officials and top-executives in the quasi-governmental sector should be legally banned’.
The thing is that these initiatives are going to slow down the process of redistributing the spheres of influence in the Kazakh economy from Nursultan Nazarbayev, his relatives and allies to the advantage of others. For, it is no secret that, in Kazakhstan, access to power provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money without which, as a rule, a redistribution cannot happen. Therefore, if Tokayev’s relatives will be stripped off such resources, Nazarbayev’s relatives will have a much greater chance for survival.
Here is what Akorda’s press-release says about the political reforms.
‘Apart from that, the political reforms will affect the legislative branch of power. The procedure of setting up the Senate and a number of the latter’s functions will be revised. The Head of the State has suggested to reduce the presidential quota in the Lower House of the Parliament from 15 to 10 members. Also, the quota of the Assembly of the people of Kazakhstan in the Mazhilis will be eliminated. It will be given to the Senate and, at the same time, reduced from 9 to 5 members.
The program of the political reforms also mentions perfecting the electoral system, modernising the electoral process, broadening the ways for the development of the party system. The Mazhilis will be formed on the mixed basis - 70% of the deputies will be elected on the pro rata basis, 30% on the majority basis. The party registration procedure will be significantly simplified. The registration ceiling is to be reduced by four times - from 20 thousand to 5 thousand persons.’
In our opinion, all the aforementioned ideas are an imitation of frenzied activities. And, simultaneously, a blatant attempt to deceive the Kazakh citizens. At the same time, the fact that Tokayev in his team did not dare to reduce the minimal membership ceiling required for a party to be legally registered down to the quantities advisable in the new reality or to eliminate it completely as well as to switch to the majority voting system clearly testifies that they were being cautious.
Simultaneously, they are clearly trying to find a new balance between what is desired (demanded) by the population and what, in their opinion, is possible in the current situation. We should probably neither sing them praises nor reprimand them for that. Let us just wait and see what happens.
We believe that the founding of the Constitutional Court as well as the creating of the National Kurultay is going to be nothing but the same kind of imitation of frenzied activities. Both of these structures, it seems, are to become the channels through which the authorities will reduce the internal political tensions. However, since these channels will be directly supervised by Akorda through their set-up mechanisms, it will be a crucial mistake to hope for their usefulness for the country and the citizens.
In conclusion, a few words on the reform of the administrative and territorial structure of the country. Here is a quote from the press-release.
‘The large-scale political reforms will affect the administrative and territorial structure of the county. The President has suggested establishing the Abay and Ulytau regions with the riginal capitals situated in Semey and Zhezkazgan, respectively. The leader of Kazakhstan has also announced the decision to divide the Almaty region into two new regions - the Alamty region with the capital situated in Kapshagay and the Zhetysuy region with the capital situated in Taldykorgan. The Head of the State has said that he is prepared to listen to the public’s opinion if the suggestion to rename the Kapshagay city to honor Dinmukhamed Kunayev, the outstanding son of the Kazakh people, is expressed’.
In our opinion, there is no point in criticising Kassym-Jomart Tokayev regarding this matter. So what if the head of the state has decided to bring the state apparatus in the regions experiencing the biggest socio-economic problems closer to the local population? It’s his right. Of course, these decisions are not going to have a real effect on the level and the quality of life of the people. But it’s another matter.
As to the President’s two closest allies, Secretary of State Erlan Karin and Head of the Senate Maulen Ashimbayev, they, of course, have expressed support regarding their boss’ decisions.
In his Telegram post (quoting from 365info.kz), Karin says -
‘ First of all, it (the address) confirms the irreversible nature of the political modernisation.
Second, it emphasises the definitive breakaway from tht super-presidential form of governance to the presidential republic with a strong parliament.
Third, it introduces significant changes into the balancing of the governmental institutions from the standpoint of limiting the presidential authorities, reformatting the functions of both Houses, establishing the Constitutional Court.
Fourth, it cardinally changes the existing electoral system - the mixed pro rata/majority model and the liberalisation of the party registration process have been announced.
Fifths, it dramatically strengthens the role of the maslikhats, their identity and independence’.
To this, we would like to respond that political reforms a-la Kassym-Jomart Tokayev are not simply reversible. At any moment, they may start moving in the opposite direction and convert into a drastic tightening of the Kazakh authoritarian political regime and the ‘super-presidential’ vertical as it has happened right before our eyes in neighbouring Russia. Therefore, believing the Kazakh Secretary of State won’t get you anywhere.
In our opinion, in order for ‘the breakaway from the super-presidential form of governance to the presidential republic’ to happen, Nazarbayev must face the trial together with his main henchmen. And only after the main architect and builder of ‘the super-presidential form of governance’ will have been put behind bars, Karin’s promises may start coming to life and a new era in the country’s history may begin.
As for the Head of the Senate, this is what he has written on his Facebook page (quoting from Tengrinews.kz).
‘The Head of the State has confirmed the adherence to the course of democratisation and presented a package of profound and systemic reforms in the social and political sphere. The introduced initiatives are to cardinally transform the existing political system and move it towards its bigger transparency, accountability and efficiency’.
Let us underscore, yet again, that one cannot talk about the reforms presented by Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on March 16, 2022, as profound and systemic. At the most, one can say that Akorda that has finally started to hear the demands of the civil society.
Unfortunately, it is already too late. The proposed political reforms are outdated and were already worthless when they were introduced. Therefore, their implementation (regardless of how successful it will be) will not enjoy support of most of proactive Kazakh citizens, not to mention of their passive majority.
One final point. There is an interesting analysis of the text of Tokayev’s address on Facebook performed by user Sanzhar Baimbetov. Since we do not specialise in linguistics (particularly in analysing political language) we will only present one paragraph from his post.
‘Finally, according to Zipf’s law, the quality of the text is 33%. What does it mean? It is an indicator of a text’s naturalness and reflects the normal frequency of word distribution. When it is lower than 50%, it is bad; the text does not sound natural, however, the unnaturalness of political speeches in their form and content has long been the norm in Kazakhstan. The presidential speechwriters do not even think twice about such trivia. One may think that it is in the nature of the genre itself, that It is normal for presidential addresses not to sound natural.
To compare, I have analysed several Zelensky’s speeches via miratext.ru including his past yeras’ addresses to the people of Ukraine. The quality of all these texts is about 50%. In other words, Zelensky speaks to his people in their natural tongue. There is nothing natural about Tokayev’s speeches and himself which became clear in January.
When the quality of a text is about 30% according to Zipf’s law, the text is considered spam. And this address, too, is nothing but a spam message from the authorities. The technical analysis allows us to draw such conclusions on the basis of objectivity. Spam’s place in a trash can!’
